Desert Diamond Casino & Entertainment is hosting its third annual Waila Celebration at its location in Why, the tiny dot on the map at the junction of Arizona 85 and 96 just north of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
A waila band performs at last year’s second annual Waila Celebration. The event celebrating waila, social dance music adopted by the Tohono O’odham from the Spanish tradition will be held in the parking lot of Desert Diamond Casino in Why, near Ajo.
It’s so small that the casino, which the Tohono O’odham Nation opened in 1993, doesn’t have an actual address, but if you’ve driven to Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, you’ve no doubt passed it.
The Waila Celebration pays homage to the social dance music the Tohono O’odham adopted from the Spanish and made their own with an accordion, alto saxophone, six-string electric guitar and bass. The contemporary Waila bands also have drums.
Three bands — White Dove Mumsiqo, Pisinemo & Company and T.O. Native — will perform in the parking lot celebration from 6-10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25. There also will be food, arts, crafts and activities.
Admission is free and it’s open to all ages. Learn more at ddcaz.com.
Alabama rockers recreating AC/DC album
J. Willoughby and Damon Johnson were awestruck back in the mid-2000s by the lengths orchestras took to honor the intention of classical music that had stood the test of centuries.
The Black Jacket Symphony is coming to Rialto Theatre to recreate AC/DC’s famous album “Back In Black.”
Why not do that for classic rock, take an album and recreate it note by note just as the band had intended?
Thus was born the Black Jacket Symphony, a cover band whose mission is to recreate iconic albums from The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Prince and Fleetwood Mac among them.
The band brings its latest show, ”AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’” to Rialto Theatre on Thursday, Oct. 23.
Over the past 16 years, the band, with a revolving lineup depending on which artist they are covering, has performed more than 40 classic rock albums to over a million people in the U.S.
Thursday’s concert will not only recreate the Brit rockers’ album note for note, guitar lick for guitar lick, the concert could include other great AC/DC hits.
The all-ages show starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Rialto, 318 E. Congress St. Tickets are $39-$54.65 through rialtotheatre.com.
Tucson Symphony welcomes back violinist
Spanish-born violinist Francisco Fullana returns to the Tucson Symphony Orchestra this weekend to perform Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 3.
Francisco Fullana, the 2022-23 Tucson Symphony Orchestra artist in residence, will rejoin the orchestra this weekend to perform Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 3.
Consider it an encore to Fullana’s 2022 TSO artist-in-residency, which included him soloing with the orchestra on Max Richter’s redux of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” In that work, Richter tossed out the majority of Vivaldi’s original composition and retooled the piece to emphasize Richter’s grounding in postmodern and minimalist music.
This weekend’s Saint-Saëns might not be the French composer’s most technically challenging, but with its impressionistic subtleties and varied melodies, it poses more of an interpretive challenge to nail down the mood shifts and sublime lyrical passages.
In addition to the concerto, the TSO’s “Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky” concert, under the baton of Venezuelan guest conductor Manuel Hernández Silva, will include Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimini,” based on the true story made famous by Dante’s “Inferno” of a young Italian girl tricked into an arranged marriage who is killed by her husband when she becomes lovers with his younger brother.
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 26, at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $16.90-$109.30 through tucsonsymphony.org.
